Bruce Handy on Culture

From a Sly Mad Men Reference to Her New Memoir, Carole King’s Pop-Culture Renaissance

America is having a Carole King moment, and like every important cultural obsession, from obscure French pop songs to geometric corn-based snack foods, it has been driven by Matt Weiner, the creator of Mad Men, who closed last week’s episode with “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss),” a 1962 song recorded by the Crystals and written by King and her then husband, lyricist Gerry Goffin. Weiner used it as an ironic coda to an episode that featured various characters, male and female, real and historic (the latter including eight student nurses who were famously murdered one long awful night in Chicago in 1966), grappling with masculine needs, assumptions, and prerogatives. Not pretty, but neither is the song, probably the dirge-iest piece of pop ever recorded, up until the advent of the Smiths:

He hit me

And it felt like a kiss

He hit me

But it didn’t hurt me…

If he didn’t care for me

I could have never made him mad

But he hit me

And I was glad

Bonus, sadly excessive irony: the song was produced by non-metaphorical lady killer Phil Spector!

You will be glad to know, however, that even in 1962 those were controversial, protest-engendering lyrics. The song tanked—one of the few outright duds in King’s catalogue. But anyway, I came here to praise Carole King! I love Carole King! Like everyone my age, and maybe everyone period, I grew up listening to all the great songs from Tapestry on the radio and when I got older and started fancying myself a music nerd, I was startled to learn that before she was a singer-songwriter and iconic album-cover presence, King had been a Brill Building songwriter (a misnomer; she and Goffin worked out of a different Broadway building) knocking out hits for people such as Aretha Franklin, the Monkees, the Byrds, the Everly Brothers, the Shirelles, Little Eva. And if it is possible for someone as successful, honored, and beloved as King to be under-rated, I think that’s true. You rarely see her on the short-list of the greatest 60s-generation songwriters, where she should be, with John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and Brian Wilson. Is that sexism, or a rockist snub of a career that began, when King was still a teenager, just down the block from Tin Pan Alley?

Another thing I love about King is that even at 70, despite the Earth-mother image that Tapestry and its cover with the window seat and the curtains and the cat won her, she still comes across in appearances like America’s Coolest Kid Sister Ever. (Is that sexism? I hope not.) Unlike Bugles and “Zou Bisou Bisou,” King would be having a moment even without Mad Men, thanks to the publication this month of her autobiography, Natural Woman, which is as charming and winning as you’d hope. Still, it suffers from—and it pains me to say this—a characteristic generosity of spirit, which often tempers her story-telling. Spite is a horrible emotion, but memoir-writing might be the one activity where it comes in handy, at least from a readers’ point of view. And yet, King is the woman who wrote the lyric.

You got to get up every morning

With a smile on your face

And show the world

All the love in your heart

And that is very much the woman who wrote her memoir, for good and ill. You can find a more complex but appreciative and respectful look at King’s life in Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us, which was excerpted in Vanity Fair.__ __Better still, you should check out King’s forthcoming album, The Legendary Demos—“demos” being the industry term for rough-draft recordings that serve as guidelines for finished productions. Like any musician, King’s truest memoir has always been her music, and here are some of her best songs in raw and direct versions, rough-hewn at times but still great listens. Even the Tapestrysongs, which are plenty direct on that album, bleed a little more here. They also showcase her funky, expressive piano playing better than the full-band versions.

One of the highlights is her demo of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” Aretha Franklin’s 1967 masterpiece, which King’s memoir says was born when Jerry Wexler, the Atlantic Records co-founder and producer, pulled up in a car as she and Goffin were walking down Broadway, stuck his head out the window, and said, “I’m looking for a really big hit for Aretha. How about writing a song called ‘Natural Woman’?” (Ah, Gotham, a city where geniuses used to clog the streets and sidewalks instead of tourists and bike messengers.) Nothing will ever touch Franklin’s version, but King’s demo, recorded just with piano and her own multi-tracked voice, can hold its head up high, and unlike her even simpler version of the song on *Tapestry,*this one doesn’t have Franklin’s in the rear-view mirror. Instead, you can hear the immediacy of inspiration in King’s singing, which sounds as deeply felt as Franklin’s and nearly as soulful. The arrangement features some churchy harmonies—King harmonizing with herself—which Wexler dropped in his production for Franklin. Aretha didn’t need them, but they’re gorgeous.

I also like King’s demo of “Pleasant Valley Sunday” maybe even more than the Monkees’ version, and I love the Monkees. Again, there are some gorgeous harmonies—this time with a melancholy edge, underscoring the lyrics’ “Penny Lane”–like panorama of suburban alienation—which were dropped or downplayed in the mix on the band’s record. Also, where Mickey Dolenz’s vocal has a snide edge, King’s is pretty and, at times, unexpectedly plaintive, conveying empathy, perhaps, rather than hip condescension. Which makes sense since she and Goffin were more or less living the song in suburban New Jersey when they wrote it in 1967, before they divorced and King lit out for Laurel Canyon.

You can hear her version here: [#iframe: http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F43357387&show_artwork=true]||||||